


i feel so homesick for a place that doesn't exist

by bloodflood



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Starts off angsty, but ends happy, hopefully a little sweet, or YANGsty lol, something a little short, these girls make my heart hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 20:05:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19775446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodflood/pseuds/bloodflood
Summary: Blake knows this about her team:They are destined for deathorBlake in Atlas, trying to figure out how to tell Yang, how to keep her team alive, how to love through it all.





	i feel so homesick for a place that doesn't exist

**Author's Note:**

> well, this is the first time I've tried writing for bumbleby. Blake and Yang have my entire heart and this was a nice little thing to write.

Blake knows this about her team:

  
Ruby is a tragedy waiting to happen — one that’s already set in place, a train unhooked from the tracks. She’s the blood and fire from the mountainside, the roar of the avalanche. Blake sees it in the way she fights, wild and unfound, a blur of red and petals that have to hurt. Sacrificial. A lamb running towards the slaughter. Ruby will give anything, her blood and bones and life, to be a hero, the kind that always dies at the end of the day. Blake had once suggested to her to slow down. To breathe. Focus on what’s important and on the people that love her. Had begged her, even. Ruby had laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

Weiss is proud. Back straighter, stronger than Blake has ever known. Her chin sharp like the point of danger. One that reads: _step too far in one direction and you will die_. Of course, of course, those are the icy outsides of her, the dust coated shell she’s hardened and formed and perfected over the years of living in her father’s cold castle. Behind those walls, Weiss holds her shoulders like a bird cradles its broken wing. She’s scared. Scared of the world, of not being loved, not being enough. Blake knows that Weiss’s heart beats like a wilted flower, one that’s been drowned before but is somehow still trying to grow. (Somewhere, Blake wonders if they’re not the same, after all.)

Yang. Yang. Yang. Yang. Blake doesn’t know Yang. She just _feels_ Yang. An omnipresent force, wild and hot and strong and unstoppable, ineffable and indomitable. From the sloping sharp of her collarbones to the smooth plains of her hands, the lines in her palms, Yang is powerful. Only a god could have granted her that power and she yields it well. Blake likes to watch her from afar, tracks the movement of her steps, how she sways to one side, always closer to Ruby, ready to jump in front and protect. Ready to lay her life down. Blake knows she’s like her sister in that way - not glory seeking, but always with the taste of death in her mouth.

Yang once said that she wants to follow wherever the adventure will take her. Blake really knows that she means she’ll follow Ruby wherever she goes. She’s done nothing but mold herself into a shield, large and unopposed.

A yellow glint of metal from Yang’s arm catches Blake’s eye. A rock plummets deep into her stomach. Mostly unopposed.

Blake watches now. Strength is the only word on her mind. The way her muscles flex, the long strides of her legs, shoulders tensing — a lion stuck in a cage. She runs her hands through her thick hair, muscles bounding and unfolding and Blake’s heart catches itself on her ribcage, misses a step when she goes to walk next. It’s enough to alert the team.

“Blake?” Weiss eyes her ever growing blush. “Did you just trip?” Incredulous is the tone. Blake never slips up. Never.

Ruby giggles behind her hand and Blake can’t help but smile in response, awkwardly going to smooth back her hair, surprised when her fingers find the end of it much sooner than she’s used to.

“Tripped on some ice.” Blake explains it away, ignores the look Weiss tosses her way, one that says _I don’t believe you_. The streets are clear of it, after all.

“Well,” it’s Yang this time. Blake tries to ignore how her heart jumps at the warm, adoring tone in her voice. Tries to ignore how her veins thrum under her hands, through her shoulders.

“Maybe it’s about time we head back — it’s getting late—” She crosses her arms, eyes Ruby’s red cheeks. “Cold, too.”

Blake’s ears flick at the sound of Calavera’s voice. “It’s only going to get colder.” The older woman huffs, breath freezing in the air, drawing her cloak closer around her. “These winter nights are unbearable.”

Weiss does an odd, knowing chuckle. “It’s actually pretty warm where we are, just because we’re close to the ocean. Further north is known for getting well below zero degrees.”

Blake closes her eyes and wishes for the warm scented air of Menagerie, the hot sand in her boots, sun burning her skin. The response she gets is a frosty whip of wind that nips at her nose. Her ears fold flat as she shivers, vaguely irritated at the slight numbing of her feet.

Yang’s voice sounds again and Blake glances up because of course she does, of course she will always come when Yang calls. Gold meets lavender in a bit of a surprise as Blake catalogs the worried frown on Yang’s face. “Yeah, let’s go guys. I can’t feel my thighs anymore.”

/

Blake sees the future in her sleep sometimes.

The air is filled with ash and fire, burning buildings behind her, rumbling to the ground in a way that reminds her of old giants’ deaths. Her hands are bloody, stinging as she grips Gambol Shroud tighter. Distant roars thunder in the background and the hair on her ears stand straight up. Below, her foot kicks away a skull.

Blake’s fingers find the smoldering edge of plaster and steel as she peers around the corner. Ruby is there, Crescent Rose spinning fast, fast, a small huff of breath as it makes impact on a hulking figure — shadowed and imposing — the thing yowls and makes a grab for Ruby who barely ducks out of the way in time. Ruby gets back up and goes again, again, again, again. She goes and goes and goes until she hunches over, until red seeps through the cream undershirt she wears.

“Ruby!” Blake starts to run, feels the numbness of her own feet as she sprints as fast as she can towards her leader. “Ruby, enough!”

She can’t hear her.

Gambol Shroud folds into a gun, Blake goes to fire. Once, twice, three times and — and nothing happens. No bullets fire, the gun doesn’t cock back. Tries again. Once, twice, three times and nothing, nothing.

Ruby is on the ground now, coughing red and black and all Blake can do is stare and scream. Screams louder when she finally collapses, falls from her knees face forward, bone-white spikes sticking through her chest.

“Oh, oh my god. Oh my _fucking_ god, Ruby! Ruby!” Blake screams, her face wet with tears she didn’t know she was shedding. Voice guttural, raw with pain she didn’t know she was capable of feeling. The rest of her goes numb, sick in her stomach, so sick it travels into her bloodstream, light headed. “Ruby, fuck! Hold on, I’m coming!”

And she does try to run towards Ruby, does try to move her feet, already planning out the next dodges she’ll have to take to get her and Ruby out of here alive. The problem is her feet aren’t moving, they’re stuck where she’s standing. Glued to the ground in a pile of melting asphalt and the blood from the corpses in the street. Blake goes to pick up her feet to try to move them again when a sound hollows her to the core.

Ember Celica fires in rapid succession, propelling Yang forward and she hits the ground so hard it crumbles. She is alight, no difference between her golden locks and the flames that come from within. Eyes red as blood, red as grief. Blake watches in slow motion as Yang pushes herself forward, screams as she knows that Yang is with the taste of death in her mouth.

After, Blake will hold Yang in her arms, stroking away dirt, watching out for scratches as if it matters, blood pooling behind her head as her blonde hair acts in place of a halo. She dies there, beautiful and bloodied.

She always dies like that, and she always will.

Blake always walks away with a new taste in her mouth, too.

Blake wakes before sunrise, the front of her shirt is slightly sweaty, no doubt because she had somehow managed to, once again, press herself into Yang’s back during the night.

She rolls over, breathing hard and fast, one hand still pressed against Yang’s back, feeling the familiar, almost sun-like, warmth, the familiar muscle there. Reassurance. Yang is here, here. She’s not in a battlefield dying for her sister. Her grip tightens in Yang’s shirt before she’s aware that she had, and her shoulders relax. Yang feels like home, she feels like coming home after not knowing where it had been, feels like the sugared sand between her toes, the sunburnt sky, the scent of the cooling sea chasing the smell of coconuts. Minutely, she reaches over, finds the pulse point of Yang’s wrist, right under her thumb, in the grove of two fine tendons, feels the fire of the blood pumping and she counts. One, two, three… She’s here, Blake has to remind herself. She’s here. Four, five, six…

“Hey.” Yang’s voice rasps out as she starts to shift over, and it startles Blake enough that she rips her hand away, holds it to her chest like an apology. “Are you okay? You sounded like you were having a bad dream.”

Blake’s mind, in that moment, races through a million things to say, things she thinks she should, things she thinks she shouldn’t. “I- I’m sorry that I woke you up.” A plea, a gasp against the smoke still stuck in her throat. How would she even begin to tell Yang all the things that are building on the edge of her tongue? _I keep seeing you die, nothing scares me more than that. You feel like home to me. I’m sorry I’m so bothersome — I’m scared of losing you again. You are my home. I think I lo—_

Yang flips over, studies Blake with eyes that shock her still. She just looks, eyes scanning her face, the sweat droplets on her neck, her tight fists. A look of understanding comes over then, smoothing out the worried lines of her face, the tautness of her eyebrows. She smiles finally, finally. A crooked grin, soft, soft, and she’s reaching for Blake’s arm. “You know you can always talk to me.”

Somehow, Blake doesn’t know how, Blake never knows. Her body seems to do whatever it fucking wants to and doesn’t ask her for any input, but somehow Blake finds Yang’s hand, tangles their fingers together and squeezes and she hopes Yang understands what she’s trying to say.

(Of course she does. Of course she does. Yang will always come when Blake calls.)

“I think we should try to go back to sleep, yeah?” Yang flips onto her back. Holds her arm out, her soft, adoring smile is quickly replaced with a teasing one. “Come on over here, I know you use me for warmth.” She laughs as she takes a pillow to the face, then pulls Blake down beside her. “You don’t have to act tough in front of me.”

Blake, eventually, embarrassingly, awkwardly, settles herself in the crook of Yang’s shoulder, slides her hand across the blonde’s stomach, touch feather light, nearly hovering and Yang hums, amused. “Goodnight, Yang.” Blake breathes, palm splayed out flat against Yang’s stomach and Blakes wonders, not for the first time, how it is that she ever got this far.

The response she gets is deep, heavy, snore like breathing.

Ruby and Weiss will come to wake them up well after the sun shatters through the sky. They decide not to when they find the pair intertwined, legs and arms ending and starting at one another, the blankets kicked off Yang but piled high on Blake. Breaths complementing each other’s rhythm.

/

Blake knows this about her team:

They will never back down from a fight.

There’s _always_ something, never time for a happy ending. Not when the world is collapsing around them.

A Grimm, large and big, towering, a fusion they’ve never seen before.

“Okay, team.” Ruby says, tired, exhaustion coating her voice, it drags her shoulders down. Crescent Rose looks a little too heavy to hold this time around. Blake wonders what kind of monsters Ruby sees during the night. “Okay. We got this. We can do it.” It doesn’t sound like she’s trying to convince them.

 _When will it end?_ Ruby looks like she says, underneath her breath, underneath her despair.

 _It never will._ Blake wants to say, keeping the Grimm’s attention on her long enough for Yang to get a few punches in, hears the cracking of its ribcage. It never will. And it is a promise.

Blake learns a lot about Qrow when they fight with him.

She learns that he has tragedies of his own, the reason behind his alcoholism, the reason his shoulders slump, the reason he can’t ever really look at Ruby in the eyes. Qrow has loved and lost and he is worried about history repeating itself, worried about what would happen if Ruby died, just like her mother. Would Yang ever forgive him? Would Ruby? Would Summer? Would he? He’s a man forever fated to drown staring into the bottom of a bottle, suffocating on his past, choking on guilt.

Qrow will watch Ruby’s dance with death with an ever-too-present stare of desperation, tries to take the blunt of the blows, tries to get her out of the line of fire, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

They will walk away with the stench of death. Always, _always._  
/

“Qrow.” Blake asks, ducking under rotting pillar, side stepping burnt remains of a table, of a chair, of a child’s bed. “Have you ever loved?”

Qrow stumbles into a wall, clutches at his chest, red eyes glistening. “I have loved.” He answers, tears clogging up his throat. “I have loved, I have loved, and I have lost.”

Blake watches him for a moment, how he grips at his heart, looking like he wants to rip it out, squeeze until it stops beating.

“I’m in love.” She bites her tongue immediately after saying this, mouth filling with blood. Is she? Is she? Her heart responds simply. _Yes._

Instead of his heart, Qrow rips his flask from his chest. “I know.” A laugh, guttural and violent and it promises darkness. “I know.”  
/

Yang pulls her into a hug.

And it means nothing different except everything about Blake is different.

Different in the way her heart threatens to burst out of her ribcage, different in the way her fingers knot into Yang’s new jacket, different in the way that Blake will press her mouth in an open kiss to the crook of Yang’s neck, without fail. She doesn’t mean to do this. It really is just a source of comfort for Blake — more reassurance that Yang is real and here and that there is a pulse beating under her skin. She thinks to her dreams, golden hair split with blood, and shakes.

Yang will shiver when she does this. Without fail.

“I’m sorry.” Blake pulls back, ears back, cheeks coated with shame. “I don’t know why I did that — I —” She cuts herself off, shrugs, and drags her eyes to Yang’s face.

Yang’s jaw is taut, pulling impossible sharp at the angles, the edge of her jawbone. Her lilac eyes are darker, and alarmingly, Yang seems conflicted about something — tossing and turning her thoughts around in her head, like she’s about to do something she isn’t sure will work out.

“Yang.” Blake tries, noticing the ever tightening fingers on the hem of her jacket. “What’s wrong? You can talk to me.” Soft, soft, she tries to soften her voice, but it isn’t enough to draw Yang out of her thoughts. Or, it is. Because Yang’s hand comes up, softly, softly, tilts Blakes jaw up and away, exposing the long column of her neck.

Pillowy soft lips find purchase at the dip of Blake’s collarbone, moves up, slowly, heartbreakingly slow, until they find the bottom of Blake’s jaw. An open mouthed kiss is pressed there, a shaky, nervous breath stutters as Yang pulls back, deep red flush along the tops of her cheekbones.

“I just wanted to see.” Yang, slightly breathless, says. She doesn’t pull back any further, and Blake doesn’t want her too. All the raven haired girl can think about is pushing Yang onto the desk behind her, seeing what makes her tick, what marks she could leave, how loud she can get her to be. Her palms itch with the thought.

“See what?”

“If I affect you the same way you affect me.” It’s said with a small, sad smile, upturned eyebrows with the glittering of eyelashes.

“Yang.” Blake mutters, grabs her hand, places it over her chest. “ Yang, don’t you feel this?” Her heart busts through her ribcage in the same moment Yang’s eyes widen with shock, with adoration. It spills out on the floor, bloody and beating and Blake says “It is yours, _it is yours.”_  
/

  
Blake will get to push Yang onto that desk, after all.

  
/

Blake sees the future in her dreams sometimes.

The sunburnt sky roasts itself against her skin, there’s a smell of coconuts in the air that she chases with her nose. Her fingers stretch out above her and finds the softness of grass, touches the rough paper of an old book she found at a garage sale last weekend. The cover is peeling off; she had to secure it with packaging tape she’d found in the kitchen junk drawer. The drawer where Blake can’t ever really find anything because Yang throws whatever she finds in there, whatever doesn’t quite fit in the other places. Unfortunately, it’s most of the stuff Blake needs to use, all the time.

Her ears flick up and out, rotating until they secure on the multiple tunes of laughter, the rustling of paper bags, the front door opening and shutting, and then a few moments later the back door doing the same.

“Hey,” a voice of adoration, warm like the sun, soft with love. “Whatcha doin’ over here?”

Blake opens one eye, finds Yang staring down at her, hand covering her eyes from the light. Her hair is pulled up, leaving her messy bangs to frame her face. A white v-neck, dark jean-shorts.

Briefly, Blake wonders what the neighbors would think if she pulled her wife down to her, wonders what would happen if Blake made Yang scream in the grass. In the next moment, she decides she doesn’t care.

Yang connects Blake’s sudden shift in look to something very obviously coded, very quickly and shakes her head. “No way, goofy. The girls are here.”

“The girls?” Then, Blake hears their voices in the house. Weiss and Ruby have started to make jokes, having already spilled something on the floor. Weiss giggles behind her hand as Ruby cleans it up. _“Shh! Yang just installed these floor panels!”_

“I’m sorry, I totally forgot!” Blake shoots up, untangles grass from her hair.

“You forgot?” Yang asks, trying to keep a teasing smile from her face. “So you definitely didn’t set out the beef to thaw like I asked before I left?”

 _Oh, shit._ “Whoops.”

Laughing, Yang bends down and hauls Blake up, pecks a kiss on the tip of her cheekbone. “Let’s go in then, thankfully I got snack food for Ruby.”

Blake will wake up with her back pressed against Yang’s chest, feel the soft rise and fall of the other girl’s steady breaths. She grips Yang’s hand against her chest, presses it against her heart.

“Hey,” Yang’s voice rasps out. “What are you doing awake?”

“Just had a dream.”

“A bad one?”

“No,” Blake laughs, rolls over and cradles Yang’s head to her chest. “A good one.”

“Was I in it?” The blonde presses a kiss to Blakes chest, settles her head into the crook of her neck.

“You’re always in them. Always." 


End file.
